Growing in the Trees

The various plants that hand onto trees in the Jungle are just cool. No soil, and all the water they need form the air. Nifty! And not just small little plants, but, like this one, the tree dwellers can get really darned big!

Don't Blow Your Top

Arenal, Costa Rica. This is the view from our hotel! I guess that many people visit Arenal and never get the chance to see top of the volcano so we were very lucky. We were in Arenal for 4 nights and saw the mountain top every single day. WooHoo! We did not, alas, get a chance to see the actual lava flow, but the continual steam form the eruption was pretty impressive!

One Mighty Ant

Throughout Costa Rica we found many a leaf-cutter ant. There fascinating little guys building highways through the undergrowth and carying leaves someitmes great distances back to their nests. As it turn out, the soldier type ants int he colony are very strong. In Arenal we visited a hanging bridges tour and out guide demonstrated the strength of the ants as shown in the picture. If you zoom in you will see that he is holding the ant and that the ant is holding that huge leaf! Wowzers!